


Hating until there's nothing left to hate

by fictionisthebetterreality



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Friendship, One-Shot, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 18:45:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5508770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionisthebetterreality/pseuds/fictionisthebetterreality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie is a loner. It's something she's learned to be, something she has to be. Normal people don't like her, they get put off by her bluntness, her uncaring nature. She's used to it.<br/>So when a boy by the name of Eren Jaeger suddenly decides to befriend her, she obeys her instincts. She resists, she pushes, she does everything she can to drive away this boy who has galaxies in his eyes and a soul-searching gaze. Because it's too dangerous to let anyone close. There have been too many betrayals.<br/>But slowly she comes to realise that he doesn't want anything, anything except her, for who she is, not who she pretends to be. And with expectations like that, can she really accept him and his friendship in return? Can she lower the barriers she's always had and let him in? </p><p>*Based in high school.<br/>**Sort of based on what I imagine their relationship could have been AU, based off their interactions pre-female titan</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hating until there's nothing left to hate

She hated everything about him.

She hated the way his voice sounded, the way his face looked. She especially hated his eyes. The way they’d dart to her, but only when he wasn’t facing her, as if she wouldn’t be able to tell. The way they would cloud when he’d get that worried look on his face, like she couldn’t take care of herself.

As time passed, she realised they weren’t the standard blue they seemed. There were layers there, highlights and streaks of rebellious colours that had no business being there. A slight ring of gold around the pupil, spots of green and brown that made his eyes twinkle like the sky at dusk or dawn. There was an entire universe there, hidden in the depths, and she really hated it.

Observing him was like watching a puppy, she thought. Always eager to please, always asking, “Can I help?”. High energy, all the time. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him slow down, never seen him not have a smile on that big stupid face. (She ignored how often she watched him, refusing to acknowledge the possibility that watching him made her smile, too.)

So she really didn’t know how it happened. She hated him, she told herself on a regular basis, she hated everything about him. But one day, as he sat down next to her at lunch, ignoring all the empty seats left purposefully for him, ignoring the calls and smiles, instead walking directly over to her, ignoring the scowl on her face, the body language screaming ‘Leave me alone’, instead taking a seat next to her, still doing that darting thing with his eyes, she realised something. When was the last time she’d shot venom-filled barbs at him? When was the last time she had told him plainly, ‘Go Away’? .  

When had this started, this routine of him sitting next to her at lunch, peacefully and quietly eating together in a silence that had at some point stopped being awkward and angry, and instead become companionable and peaceful? She questioned it, then stopped. Because even though she hated him, she had started to like these random acts of kindness. The way he would – forcibly, it seemed – make himself quiet, somehow understanding that she wasn’t used to this, to people showing anything other than mistrust and anger towards her. He approached her as you would approach a wild animal that had once been domesticated, not making promises, not offering anything other than himself. 

As time went on, she started wishing. Wishing that he would say something, something to shatter the illusion. Make a promise he couldn’t keep, offer something he couldn’t give. Because there was no way this could last, she told herself. This had happened before, she said. People had tried to befriend her before, tried to be nice. It never lasted, once they found out the truth. The truth about her dark, angry self, that was caused by a dark and angry past. It made her scared, scared to push him away, scared to pull him closer. And that was why she hated it so much. This balancing act they had established. One day, someone was going to fall, and she had so many scars and broken bones, she didn’t know if she would survive this one.

 But did she still hate him? Yes, she said. Yes, yes yes. Over and over again, yes. Because the possibility of not hating him, of having someone that wasn’t labelled enemy, that was more than she could take. Being hard, being bitter, that was all she knew. She was an expert at keeping her distance, at not getting hurt by trusting the wrong people, by simply not trusting anyone at all.

But then. Then came along this boy who somehow put her at ease by not saying anything. Not asking, not prying, not pushing, not pulling. Just existing together in a silence she now admitted to enjoying. She felt privy to another side of him, one he didn’t show everyone, one that only she could understand. It could have been this show of trust, the fact he trusted her to understand, to get it, that made her defences crumble. For once, she wasn’t expected to admit anything, to show all her secrets under the pretence of ‘friendship’.  

She slowly learned bits and pieces about him. He liked stargazing, liked to look at the sky and let his mind empty, let all his worries and troubles float away. His past wasn’t nearly as shiny-white as she’d imagined, either, and she was surprised to find the truth behind all the hyper energy and need to help people.  She still wasn’t ready to return the favour, probably wouldn’t be for a long time. Still suspicious, even after all this time, when the glances and whispers from the others had long stopped, and their arrangement was part of lunch-time routine. She told him one afternoon, told him he shouldn’t hang around waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen, and to her disbelief he shrugged it off.

“That’s not why I sit with you”, he said. She narrowed her eyes, sure this was the moment the truth would come out, the false promises would be made, pushing down the feeling in her chest, the hope that maybe, just maybe, he was telling the truth. She asked him why he did, if it wasn’t for that.

“I don’t think people should need a reason to want to be with someone else, if it makes them happy.” He said in response, rendering her speechless. She made him happy? How on earth could she possibly make anyone happy? She searched for the truth in those eyes, those twinkling starburst eyes, and found only honesty, and perhaps a little bit of sadness. Sadness for her?  Sadness for himself? She couldn’t tell.

After that, she gave up all – or most – of her pretence of not enjoying his company. She responded more to him, and even found herself smiling once or twice. She didn’t give up her secrets easily, and stood by her statement of not being ready to share everything, but he managed to wrangle a few things out of her. Some things he already knew, of course, like her love of reading, not hard to notice, not when she had a different book every day, sometimes not even realising he was there until half of lunch had passed by because she was into a particularly good read. Other things he heard for the first time, like how she sometimes went for walks late at night to clear her head, when it got too crowded. He nodded and said Yeah, and although it was nothing major, not even close to something someone normal would consider a personal thing, the relief she felt at his acceptance was crippling. Her trust issues were in another universe, but slowly she felt her resistance to him crumbling, the walls protecting her falling on realisation that she didn’t need them, not with him. He didn’t pry, and she could no longer even pretend she hated him.

Years later, she looked back on the beginning of what she now freely called friendship and wondered where she would be had he not decided to approach her, to persist with her when she told him repeatedly to go away. She was a much different person now, with friends and acquaintances and, yes, a few enemies, but that was okay. She had people who cared about her, and that she cared about, and still couldn’t believe it sometimes. She still had bad days, but at this point he knew her inside and out, and all the ways to cheer her up and remind her that not everything was her fault. They were as close as family, and hating him was the last thing she could ever imagine.


End file.
